This method will return a relevant DublinCore::Element object. When called in a scalar context element() will return the first relevant element found, and when called in a list context it will return all the relevant elements (since Dublin Core elements are repeatable).

In order to fascilitate chaining element() will return an empty DublinCore::Element object when the requested element does not exist. You can check if you're getting an empty empty back by using the is_empty() method.